Test Internationalization improvements coming in Fedora 29

Fedora 29 development and testing is currently in full swing, and Fedora 29 features a range of improvements to Internationalization (i18n) support. Major improvements in Fedora 29 include better font support, and improvements to the iBus input method.

All this week, the Fedora i18n Team is running a Test Day Week to try out these new features. More details on helping out and testing is available at the Test Day wiki page.

Font Improvements

In Fedora 29, the default font for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (CJK) languages is now Google Noto. This provides better quality of rendering for Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters. This change provides a Serif face default for Japanese and Korean. Additionally, it provides a Monospace typeface for all of CJK languages, improving visual consistencies among the typefaces.

Fedora 29  includes version 2 of the Liberation Fonts — specifically version 2.00.3. This updated font provides wider character coverage and automated hinting instructions.

Input Method Improvements

iBus — the default input method in Fedora — is updated to version 1.5.19 in Fedora 29. This provides a range of bugfixes and enhancements. Notably, users can type either emoji annotation or Unicode names on the current application and see the composing text before the final committed text is output.

 

Fedora Project community

4 Comments

  1. Gan Shen

    As a Chinese, I’m very glad to see that Fedora keeps improving our user experience. Thank you!

  2. jesse

    Can someone in the gnome dev team work with the KDE folks? They have a great design and UX to the system that I think Gnome can benefit from.

    The entire KDE system is really nice and smooth. All their windows have standard open/minimize/maximize buttons. In Gnome, each appliation seems like it chooses its buttons. It would be nice to have a standard way for the windows to look and function. This problem is especially evident on a 4k laptop. 3200×1800. When I downgrade the resolution to fit 1900×1080, the buttons on the windows look out of place.

    The overall experience in Gnome needs a littl polish. More customization would be nice too.

    • GNOME has a design team, just like KDE does. GNOME has consistency across its design guidelines, just like KDE does. In fact, GNOME and KDE are working together right now at a conference in Denver called the Libre Application Summit. GNOME has a different visual objective and aesthetic than KDE. That has been the case since the projects were started. Each new release of both KDE and GNOME are hailed for their “additional polish” and enhancements. This sounds like a case of GNOME’s design vision not aligning with your own personal tastes. Fortunately, the free software world is full of choices, and you will no doubt be able to find a desktop that provides you with the visual appeal and functionality that you need to get your work done.

  3. LiuYan

    As a bitmap font supporter, I feel sad when default font in CJK language changed to Google Noto font.

    Bitmap font is far more clear than vector font when use it in text editor / IDE / console / terminal.

    About the emoji enhancement in iBus input method, it’s nice, I can type emoji quickly now. If the emoji name can support i18n, that would be nicer for non-english speaker (e.g: ‘xiayu’ or ‘雨’ instead of ‘rain’). Or, if user can change the emoji name to their favorite name, that would be a significant improvement.

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